When last I was rambling, I was thinking about folks' resistance to explore their minds for reasons justifying the things they believe. Bracketing aside mundane laziness, I speculate that maybe it's because of timidity, or perhaps it's because of excessive confidence in one's own prima facie intuitions.
To the latter, I'm reminded of a fantastic line from Hobbes' "Leviathan" (there are so many good lines in that book!): "For such is the nature of men that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent or more learned, yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves; for they see their own wit at hand, and other men's at a distance. But this proveth rather that men are in that point equal, than unequal. For there is not ordinarily a greater sign of the equal distribution of anything than that every man is contented with his share."
In these cases, the harsh pill the student has to learn how to swallow - and sometimes in conversation after an assignment has been graded, I've worked with the resistance to take this bitter medicine - is that their thumbs up or thumbs down is not good enough. "I'm sorry, but in order for that kind of "argument" to pass muster, I have to assume you're some kind of expert on the subject such that your intuitions as such are stand-alone reasons. But even if you WERE a philosophical expert, your intuitions alone would not be sufficient. You have to go deeper."
Now maybe this thinking exercise getting somewhere. For I think part of the difficulty is that it's just >hard< to work through the justification for our thoughts and intuitions. I think it's true the adage that there's nothing so ridiculous that some philosopher hasn't said it, and in that vein I think that many people approach the subject - or process or whatever it is you want to call "philosophy" - as though it's a matter of saying any old thing, and that's good enough. But of course that's not good enough. For any crazy-sounding thing a philosopher has said or written, that comes with a retinue of reasons which - ta da! - are the argument for that crazy position. So it goes, too, for the "it agrees with me/doesn't." There are some folks who take deep umbrage at their say-so not being good enough.
At bottom, though, I wonder if the timid writer who thinks there's nothing left to say, and the one confident in her intuitions, actually share a common core? The core element I have in mind is fear: fear that there is nothing there, an abyss, no reasons, no justification, no anything. The timid soul worries about it more immediately, whereas perhaps the other masks that fear behind an unreflective confidence?
Ah, but you see, to my mind at least - and I don't think I'm bizarre in thinking this - exploring that worrisome place is where the philosophy can really get started. There is not nothing there behind the intuition, but it is true that maybe what you find is not as veritable or as convincing as one would like to think. But we are all improved, I believe, by confronting that space and seeing it for what it is. And if our reasonable space is not as we would prefer, then it's incumbent upon us make it better. Not muffle it or ignore it or bewail its insufficiency.
Why do you believe X? What is its source? Your parents? Your church? Your teachers? Fox "news"? The Daily Show? The internet? What are the merits of the source? What is their track record? Was the belief beaten into your head, or did it come with a justification? What was the justification? Is it any good? What now?
It is a far better thing to fumble inelegantly through these questions, and be prepared to subject the answers to critique, than to rest contended on beliefs where one never questions why they're held. Hmm. Is that proposition an intuition of my own? No, I've got my reasons, but the idea is noted down as bloggedy-note topic to pursue another time.
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